Syllablade: Word Combat Game

I've been working on this project for a few months or so and I think it's finally good enough for a WIP thread so here we are

I proudly present to you Word Battle!!! (working title)
WEBGL
Android Build​

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The premise is pretty simple, you spell words to kill things, and earn gold to unlock things. Please check out what I have so far and let me know what you think! Future plans hopefully include more characters, multiplayer, more powerups, and possibly other unlockables!

Here are some gifs to give you a better idea of what this is all about

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Added a 10th character today. Morpheus the Blue Mage!!!

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I've started working on more enemies. I'm aiming for about 10 enemy types, each with basic and "boss" variations. Also I hope to have an additional background/environment for each enemy type.

So far I have Tree Monster, Spider Bat, and Goblin.

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The Necromancer!

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Great idea bro! Good luck and keep it up!

 

Troglodytes are such an under appreciated and utilized enemy.
Please include Troglodytes.

This is a really cool development. I like it.
The simplistic flat shaded art style is pleasing and well done.
Unique appearance animations for each enemy type and death cycles would be a welcome improvement I think, over the enter stage left/right, and scale down/out death.

Nice work!

 

@Chris_L Thanks for the compliment! Glad you like it!

@theANMATOR2b thanks for the suggestion I'll see what I can do about troglodytes lol. And thanks for the feedback about extra animations. I'll keep that in mind when I get closer to the polish/extra flair stage of development

 

Drew a new enemy today. The scarecrow!

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Wait a minute - are those scarecrows holding pitchforks? Thats not right!!
That's like an evil bovine attacking with steak knives, or a possessed doll holding a giant needle as a weapon.

The bad guys seem to have slightly more detail than the hero characters. Are you planning an additional detail pass on the hero characters to keep consistency?

Nice work.

 

lol you make a fair point. I suppose a grim reaper style scythe is a more traditional weapon for an evil scarecrow. I may end up taking another pass at the hero characters and try to throw in some extra details thanks for pointing out the inconsistency!

 

Had a productive day and drew up 3 more monster types. For the last one I was having some fun patching together various pieces of existing monsters. @theANMATOR2b the 2nd pic is my take on a Troglodytes as per your suggestion

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Finished my last enemy the ninja!

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Here's a shot of all the characters I have made. Now I move on to animating enemies and drawing backgrounds.

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Started in on the additional backgrounds today!

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I've got a couple new background to show off Caves and Swamp

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I got Spriter2D this weekend so I'm going through all my characters and taking another pass at the animations. So far Wilfred the brown wizard is my favorite!

 

Additionally I got another couple of backgrounds done today!

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Hey Valar - how do you like Spriter2D so far?
How were you animating your characters before?
How does it compare?

I like Wilfred - he looks good. I think the death cycle may look a little better if you smooth the key between when he falls and then his head hits the ground. It just looks a little stuttery right now. All other cycles look good.

I think your environments looks good also. Except for the corn field and the bamboo. They look good, and the kernels on the ground is a nice touch, but I think the corn stalks are too horizontally even, and maybe they could be slightly more detailed at the top.
Also on both corn and bamboo - I don't think the white gradient wash looks good. It might be that it just needs to be reversed, but it is just kind of 'washed out'.

On the bamboo segments, maybe you could randomize the height a little bit. They are all segmented at the same spot right now and it looks a bit linear.

Overall I really like your work. Just thought I'd give some feedback on subtle improvements.

 

Thanks for

Thanks for all the feedback! Yeah the cornfield is my least favorite but I'm not quite sure how to fix it. You're right about the segments on the bamboo I'm gonna have to mess with that a bit. The purpose of the white gradient is to give some contrast with the characters but I'll play with different colors maybe something else will look less "washed out".

I'll take a look at that death animation and see if I can't smooth out the end although it's probably smoother in game since the gif is only 20 fps

So far I'm really liking spriter but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it decoupled from unity. All of the tweens are linear by default and messing with the easing curves is pretty unintuitive. The importer I use let's unity sort of autosmooth the animation curves though so the final output generally looks good once you figure out how to anticipate the effect

Before I was using unity sprites and bones and I'm liking the out of unity work flow. It feels much cleaner and I don't have to worry as much about accidentally breaking animations with renames or hierarchy changes

 

I would agree with ANMATOR on the fact that the cornfield/bamboo scenery looks a little off.

And one suggestion for the name would be Word Warrior, it has a better flow.

Good job though!

 

Yeah word battle is just kinda my working title. One option I'm toying with is syllablade

 

Thats a creative name... for a creative game

I just played it, its quite fun, do you think you might make an mobile version?

 

Thanks! Yeah the Web build is just for in progress demonstration. Definitely planning for this to be a mobile game

 

Cool

And do the players do different things? Like gameplay wise... i just unlocked 1 other dude and it didnt change anything but animations... just wondering.

 

No there's no mechanical difference just different art/animations/attacks but the health and damage and all are the same

 

Yea, i figured, it would be nice though. Maybe more health for some and more damage for others... Or heals +5 more heal with a healer/deals +5 more damage with the sword icon. Just some thoughts...

Also my record is 7... dont know if thats good or not...

 

Yeah I've thought about making them more unique at one point but it would greatly increase the scope and complexity as well as make balancing an issue. Also in the final version there will be more than just "health potion" and "critical hit" tiles so there will at least be game changing unlockables . Of course nothing is ever set in stone so there's always a chance I could change how the characters work and design suggestions are always very welcome!

 

Well I'm not sure enough people have played to establish what is good or not lol. You can at least say you're probably in the top ten worldwide!

 

Yep, balanceing ;0, i used to work with some primitive software (Alice 2) and made alot of 1v1 battle games, spent alot of time balancing stuff ...

Top 10 I just tried it again... 14 kills

 

I've been plucking away at character animations for a bit and finally finished all 9. Here's a gif showcasing everybody

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Looking good I like the knight Hes cool.

 

Thanks! Out of the original animations the knight was probably the worst so I'm glad I redid them all; he looks much better now

 

Hi @TheValar, your characters look amazing!! how you did? with what you make the animation?

 

In my opinion this could quite possibly be on the Top 100. The art is fantastic. Great job.

 

Thanks a lot! The art is done in Inkscape and I'm animating everything using Spriter2D

 

Thanks a lot I really appreciate that

 

I've been working hard animating and adding the enemies and I have almost all of them done as well as the backgrounds. I'm updating the builds now so check it out!

Also here's a gif

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Its great

Really alot more fun now!

 

Awesome thanks! Next step is to add some roguelike rpg elements. There will be leveling and the enemies will be less random getting progressively more difficult. Also you will actually be able to win

 

Sounds awesome Your really doing a great job on this, keep up the good work!

 

Woah, this is really cool! Awesome art style, and very cool idea of a game. I'll be watching this one. Keep it up!

 

@RavenOfCode and @Grimbyte thanks a lot guys that's really encouraging

 

Ok uploading new builds now. It's a bit rough but stages are implemented now. Instead of totally random enemies you progress through all 10 environments fighting increasingly harder opponents until you fight the final boss at stage 10. No leveling up or anything yet but your health resets at the beginning of each stage.

 

Really a great idea... very fun, however i had one issue, a snowman spawned as the 4th enemy in swamp. Other than that I didnt find anything. Also when do you think your first release will be.

 

This is awesome! You should put it on Kongregate.com or the like when it is done! I think it would do fine as is.

 

@RavenOfCode Thanks! The way it works is that every other enemy is randomly chosen out of the ones you have already faced so once you get through a stage you will see those monsters pop up in later stages.
It's hard to say when the first release will be but I do feel like I'm closing in on finishing the mechanics. I still want to add a few other powerups and then of course I'll have to do some polish work.

@Callski Thank you! I plan on putting it out on Android and iOS when it's all finished.

 

This weekend I'm back at it and working on leveling/stats. Here's a basic rundown of the design

Health: Increases every time you level up and refills to max health
Luck: For each point you put into it you get increased chance of power tiles and increased gold find
Speed: For each point you put in you get increased dodge chance
Power: For each point you get increased bonus damage added on to each attack

I'm also thinking this might be a good way to differentiate with the characters. I could make everyone start out with like 6 stat points distributed differently to sort of fit a different playstyle. Should be somewhat naturally balanced as long as the stats are balanced and give extra incentive to unlock characters.

 

How's the project going? I can't wait for its release. This looks really cool!

 

This is turning into a very nice looking game. Very nice art and well thought out mechanics. Id like to give it a shot when I can.
@TheValar - have you thought about marketing yet? This seems like something that could be profitable or maybe even more if you give some solid effort into promoting what you have worked hard on.

Very motivating to see this coming together. Good job.

 

@Callski Thanks for the interest! Things have been on the slow side due to my weekends being busy but things are calming down a bit so hopefully I'll be pushing out updates quicker!
@theANMATOR2b I really appreciate that! Haven't thought too much about marketing yet. I'm hoping I'll be able to land a publisher but if not I guess we'll just see what happens. I don't really have any kind of marketing budget Anyway really glad you like the game so far!